A soul returns on planet earth and observes and influences people. Three people not knowing each other through the interaction of the soul begun to experience situations, recall memories and mistakes from the past and slowly start transform to the better of themselves. Images, sounds, songs and voices emerge as memories but also as what they will be on the future. Through this experience, each of them ultimately redefines the “real” person that owes to be, and they understand that each of them is unique, authentic and have to embrace themselves in order being able to embrace their fellow human beings. Through the interaction of the real with the imaginary, they evolve and through the past and the present, they find hope for a bright human future.
Mrs. Styliani, an 85-year-old woman from the village of Katafygi, recounts her life story from her apartment in the city, where she relocated nearly seventy years ago. She recalls the songs of her homeland, the people of her village, the stories passed down by her parents and grandmothers, as well as their food traditions and customs. This is a final, vivid recollection of her youth as she experienced it in the small village of the Pieria Mountains, a place rich in history and cultural heritage.
Combining music and puppet theatre, the performance explores the role and responsibility of human beings as carriers of culture, emphasizing the importance of remaining culturally active through any form of migration or displacement—whether voluntary or forced, within or beyond the borders of one’s homeland.
The work highlights the cultural richness that emerges from the interaction and blending of different traditions, as exemplified by the history of Katafygi, this small village in the Kozani region. Through Mrs. Styliani’s story, the performance reflects on memory, identity, and the enduring human capacity to preserve and transmit cultural heritage across generations and places.
Where The Water Holes Are is a dance-theatre duet exploring storytelling as a ritual of memory, community, and a “return to the human.” At the core of the performance lies a dialogue between the moving body, the body-as-object, and the body-as-sound. Formless materials and moving objects are animated by the performers, entering into an ongoing relationship with the living body and revealing human vulnerability.
The work draws inspiration from Anne Bogart’s reference to the nomadic poet of the Senegalese desert — the one who remembers where the water holes are and guides the tribe toward survival, both literal and metaphorical. Just as nature remembers through cycles and rhythms, human beings define themselves through stories and traditions. During this performance, and with the intersection of dance, theatre, and puppetry, body and object continuously shift between the roles of narrator, witness, and protagonist, jointly exploring the human condition within contemporary Western society.
*The text recited by actor Giacomo Dominici emerged from a creative process (Dada poems). Excerpts from the following texts heard in Greek and Italian: “The Window” by Yannis Ritsos [from the book “Fourth Dimension”, published by Kedros], “Theories of Performance” by Jay Besemer and “WJD: A Phenomenology” by Khashayar Mohammadi WJD [Gordon Hill Press & The Porcupine’s Quill].
The AKROVOLISTES project focuses on the historical presence of the Senegalese Riflemen (Tirailleurs Sénégalais) in Florina during the First World War. The project aims to offer a poetic interpretation of the experiences of the young soldiers who were forcibly recruited from West Africa and sent to the Balkans to serve on the front lines, while tracing their journey alongside the historical events that shaped the cultural past, present, and future of the local populations of Macedonia.
Curated by Christina Petkopoulou, the exhibition and its public programme seek to create a space for memory and reflection through a series of newly commissioned works. These include a photographic series, a collection of archival interventions and archival installations by visual artist and photographer Giannis Chatziaslanis, a sound performance by visual artist Maria Sideri in collaboration with musician Antonis Kostopoulos, and educational theatre workshops led by theatre educator Chara Lioliou.
Nikos Engonopoulos has left his mark on the palimpsest of modern Greece’s identity with a work that has stood the test of time. Sharp poetic language, visual insightfulness, glorification of colours, freedom, bravery, and a “madness” for life and love. He passionately and obstinately defended the Surrealist movement, knowledgeably and boldly engaging in dialogue with tradition while always striving for continuous transcendence.
We borrow his verse “It’s not a time for poetry…” for a performance filled with music and poetry at the accessible monument of the Holy Monastery of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary in Torniki, near Deskati in Grevena. Sokratis Sinopoulos stamps his mark on the original music score and adds to the performance with his quartet. The primeval sound of the lyra blends with jazz and modern music.
Renowned actress Reni Pittaki and Kostas Vasardanis perform and converse with the musicians along the banks of the Aliakmonas River, bathed in a magical light against a backdrop of wildflowers, chirping birds, and water reflections.
Uprooting is a traumatic experience from the past that continues to affect us today, influencing entire generations and shaping the identities and stories of both individuals and societies. The musical and audiovisual performance Passages of Memory explores the timeless bond between Hellenism and expatriation. Through a combination of songs, storytelling, and digital audiovisual art, the historical memories and the pain of uprooting are evoked, transforming the songs into living documents of collective memory.
Contradictions is a theatrical production that brings together two powerful texts in a bold dramaturgical synthesis: Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Kostas Varnalis’ The True Apology of Socrates. A contemporary Socrates stands before his accusers, answering with the philosophical clarity of Plato and the sharp, ironic voice of Varnalis. Through this staged dialogue, a timeless clash is brought to life—thought against authority, truth against deception, responsibility against apathy. Language reigns supreme on stage: philosophical, poetic, and provocative, supported by original live music that underscores the emotional and intellectual tension. Bridging two millennia of critical thought, Contradictions invites audiences to reflect anew on questions that still resonate today: What is truth? What place does the thinking individual hold in society? And what is the price of truth in our time?
Imitation of All is a music theatre and dance performance that incorporates elements of theatrical storytelling and visual happenings. At the same time, it aims to serve as the first phase of a research project on the blending of performing, interactive, narrative, and representational arts in premodern Southeastern Europe.
These hybrid performative events can be traced through fragments that, while insufficient, still support the assumption of continuities which, starting from late Greco-Roman antiquity, have come down to us as contemporary folk events or modern artistic manifestations through the post-Byzantine tradition. The lack of documentation regarding the historical accuracy and faithful delivery of the style, function, variety of themes, and form of these stage events during the crucial transitional period of the Dark Ages, in this case, allows for creative imagination: through the quest for a collective memory, we aspire to a contemporary autonomous artistic creation that showcases the fluidity connecting the past, present, and future.
A theatre performance based on the adaptation of Stella Michailidou’s fairy tale Stories from Gatouhan: We Have the Same Mom published by Kaleidoscope Publishing (2021).
The performance illuminates through the eyes of children, in a very meaningful, tender and at the same time playful way aspects of the refugee issue. There where adult cats see only problems, younger ones see riches and unique gifts. A story that unites yesterday with today, focusing on the issues of refugee reception, the real problems, the existing prejudices, but also on the value and preciousness of the unique Other.
Heroes from fairy tales of the East and the West run through the whole work like a luminous web, bringing everyone together, regardless of national, cultural, racial, religious or any other kind of differences.
Using the Asia Minor Catastrophe as a starting point we will work on the provocative and enigmatic story written by Giorgos Chimonas, Doctor Ineotis.
The wandering and the History of the masses, the history of humanity itself, its ending and the inevitable renaissance of something new are the essence of the Asia Minor Catastrophe and are also powerfully present in Chimonas’ text. Chimonas writes a story but its narrative is being constantly interrupted, in the same way that dreams work. And the dreamy element in the archaeological site of Deskati in Grevena is the Tarkovskian setting that perfectly matches with the poetic writing of the text.
The non-realistic speech delivery, the scenery, the music and the singing, are the elements that will compose our performance.